' The sun is shining through the bars of my window on what must be a glorious summer day. I've been incarcerated in a cell five paces by three for twelve & a half hours & will not be let out again until midday; eighteen & a half hours of solitary confinement. There is a child of seventeen in the cell below me who has been charged with shoplifting
- his first offence not even convicted
- & he is being locked up for eighteen & a half hours unable to speak to anyone. This is Great Britain in the twenty-first century not Turkey not Nigeria not Kosovo but Britain.' On Thursday 19 July 2001 after a perjury trial lasting seven weeks Jeffrey Archer was sentenced to four years in jail. He was to spend the first twenty-two days & fourteen hours in HMP Belmarsh a double A-Category high-security prison in South London which houses some of Britain's most violent criminals. This is the author's daily record of the time he spent there.